Aspects of the present invention relate to social networks, online mail clients and the like, and more particularly to a method, system and computer program product for searching and displaying related content to a post in an activity stream.
Online social networks are a universal mechanism to connect people and information in logical and organized ways which enable sharing and processing of information between the members of the social network. Common mechanisms for sharing and processing information on online social networks may include, but are not necessarily limited to, a wall or virtual wall where a user or member of the social network can post messages for other users or members; an activity stream which may be a list of messages or posts received by a user or member and may also include a list of messages or posts sent by the user or member; a timeline that may chronologically list a series of events, and profiles of users or members that can be accessed for information about a particular user or member. These mechanisms enable users or members to rapidly share information with others and gather information from others in the network. However, finding and presenting related posts can be difficult. Activity streams present posts to the user in chronological order. Therefore, related posts often do not appear together in the activity stream. When the user views a new post, the user may be confused or not understand the context of the post because the user cannot recall information displayed in an earlier post, or the user may not have seen the earlier post at all. To fill in this missing information for complete understanding or awareness of the new or current post, the user has to manually perform searches and/or filter posts by date, category or possibly some other arrangement if the user has even established some arrangement for organizing posts. This technique of finding possible related information or posts may have additional shortcomings, such as the user not being able to display the information in context, redundant information may be displayed, and the user is not able to see chronologically what may have resulted in the new post.